Why is north up? Did the early explorers, mapmakers, astronomers, and the like get together and vote, or did it just sort of happen? Does everyone on earth think of north as up, or could a Northern Hemispherian like myself travel south of the equator and buy a globe with Antarctica on top? –David Johnson, W. Arlington
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By cracky, David, I think you’re on to something here. With a few minor exceptions, which we shall get to directly, mapmakers throughout the world invariably put north on top, even if they were born and raised in Tierra del Fuego. What we are dealing with, in other words, is a case of blatant, institutionalized directionism. The unfairness of it cannot help but rankle any right-thinking person. Why should the big N always be on top when there are hundreds of other directions–thousands, if you get down to seconds of arc–that have an equally legitimate claim on our affections? I grieve to think of the shattered dreams of, say, south southeast.
But getting back to your question. The notion that north should always be up and east at the right was established by the Egyptian astronomer Ptolemy (90-168 AD). “Perhaps this was because the better-known places in his world were in the northern hemisphere, and on a flat map these were most convenient for study if they were in the upper right-hand corner,” historian Daniel Boorstin opines. At any rate, by the time Southern Hemispheroids had become numerically significant enough to bitch, the north-side-up convention was too well established to change.
